cassette

Behold! A secrecy, an enigmatic moment in the near future, a diamond in the rough yet to come…

I admit: a dramatic introduction, but hey, there’s a new Idylls Of The Last King album coming up soon, now in its finishing phase, erelong available for the audience. The working title will be A Year At The End Of Time, and probably it will be released via Heimat Der Katastrophe from Italy. It is supposed to be a reflection of earthly time, a narration around our natural cycle, a proclamation of seasons that come and go.

The über-productive outfit with the ingeniously developed name Crazygoji, hailing from Illinois, US, did originally release Times New Romantic in early 2024; more specific, it did see the stroboscopic light on February 2^nd in both self-release as well via New Zealand-based label Lilypad Records.

Quite a ‘huge’ name within the Finnish Black Metal scene is Perttu Pakkanen, also acting under monikers like P. E. Packain or Vainaya, and others. The list of excellent and magnificent projects he is, or was, involved with, includes no less than acts like Sargeist, Horna, Vitsaus, Cornigr or Theriomorph, as well as one of my most beloved combos from the last decade, mighty Adaestuo.

Cryo Crypt is a very young side-label of Cryo Chamber with the aim to concentrate on a rather Dungeon Synth oriented identity. While the main label digs in the mud of Cinematic Ambient Music, this sub-label will release material by Cryo Chamber family members (and others?) that indeed explore the aural realms beneath the dungeon. The focus lies on releases in cassette format.

Some might recognize the name Ian ‘Mully’ Mullinger from his assistance with Vallenfyre (at that time, this band also included members from Brujeria, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride). Others might know him from the EBM / Dark Techno / Synthwave project Electric Dragon.

I recently posted a review on Lamaštu, a stunning and magisterial collaborative work of Alessio Antoni aka Neraterræ and Mattia Giovanni Accinni aka Chaigidel (link: see below). But the Chaigidel project created another interesting adventure about four years ago at the moment of this writing, with the working title Entrails Of The Earth.

Hold hands and take a journey into loneliness and despair. We have all been there, we just put the soundtrack together to your terror. Welcome to a place of warmth and tears.

One of the most influential and notorious labels within the (Dark / Cinematic / Space / Drone) Ambient scene is, without any doubt, Oregon-based Cryo Chamber. It’s a label run by Sweden-born artist Simon Heath, whom you might know from outfits like Atrium Carceri, Cryo Chamber Collaboration, Krusseldorf, Sabled Sun, as well as Abnocto, Musterion or Za Frûmi, which he ran, all three of them, with Simon Kölle.

A very active and productive musician from Hungarian soil, and this for quite some time, is Thomas Khrul. He’s active, both solo as in duo (mostly with same-minded vocalists) or in bands, in acts like Siculicidium, Gorthor, Shadowthrone, Funebre, the young Eonian Tenebris or mighty Nocrul, amongst several others. This guy also has a Dungeon Synth project, called Vallahir.

Hailing from New York – more specifically Poughkeepsie (ah, I adore that name, though I do not exactly know how to pronounce it decently) – 8 Hour Animal is an Industrial / Electronics act that did impress undersigned deeply with their Sentient Ruin Laboratories debut Resigner (link for the review: see below). In the meantime, this project recorded and released some more interesting stuff, and earlier this year they did also finish a new effort for Sentient Ruin Laboratories, called Kill Your Boss.